November 7, 2017

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Shared lists and games might be coming to Allo

by John_A

Big things are in the works for Allo.

As much as I love using Allo, Google’s messaging service is still nowhere near as popular as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc. Allo already has a lot of compelling features that are a lot of fun to use if you actually give the platform a chance, and with the recent discovery of “Allo Activities”, it looks like that point will soon be even more prominent.

The team at Android Police recently got their hands on screenshots and a video of these Activities, and while the presence of these new features has yet to be confirmed by Google, everything we’re seeing here does look legit. So, what exactly are Allo Activites?

Whenever this is introduced, a new + icon will appear in your Allo toolbar above the area where you compose a message, and tapping on it will reveal various activities that you can launch. Tapping on this will reveal options for attaching a file or sending your location to whoever you’re talking to, and while these two features have been present in Allo for some time, there’s a lot more here that we’ve never before seen.

One of the new activities is titled as “Shared List”, and as you can probably guess, this is a built-in list within Allo where you can add items to share between you and the person/people in your conversation. Although you can already share to-do lists with people through a variety of other apps, having the ability to do so right within Allo is a nice touch for those that use it.

Along with the Shared List, Allo Activities will also introduce games for the first time in Allo history. There appear to be four games, including Quick, Draw!, Group Chess, Pet Hotel, and Toadal Pondage. They look to be fairly simple, and after tapping on whatever one you’d like to play, it’ll load within your conversation before popping up.

We don’t know when Allo Activites will officially launch (or if they ever will), but this seems like a smart move on Google’s part. As solid of a messaging service as Allo already is, there’s still not a big enough argument to be made for getting people to convert from platform’s they’re already comfortable with. However, if Google plays its cards right with Activites, it could turn Allo into more than basic messaging. Stay tuned.